by Ray Burke

Created on: May 07, 2008

Our Last Great Century:

This is it! The 21st century will be as great as humans will ever have it! Far from killing ourselves off through war, famine, global warming, nanotechnology, or indifference, and assuming we dodge the killer asteroid and survive other natural global catastrophes, then humans have an open and progressive future ahead.

Why? Being an optimist of informed opinion, this will be the single most challenging century ahead where we will leave behind certain 20th Century paradigms and flaws and set a new agenda. We are ever more aware of our nature and the surrounding environment, including the universe. We are ready to face our Earthly demons and also reach out once more beyond our veil to the moon and then Mars our first step in humanity's cosmic journey and proof that we deserve to persist as a species. We would lack no ambition, fear no challenge and seek the impossible. This may seem simplistic with all that's going on around us now, but no life, no strand of society will ever be perfect. There will always be conflict, inequality and distress, but we will learn to handle these better, because there will be more freedom through integration and progress between nations and a smoother world system.

While Globalisation is still seen as an attempt to suck nations into a system that does not benefit them, some nations have made the system work for them. But the system is changing with huge consequences. We have the potential to solve a great many problems this century and most will be. Nations will cooperate more to their benefit. People will live wealthier and healthier lives. The energy transition will not only transform global economic and business paradigms, but also political worldviews. Politics will enter a new two-tier model: International and local. With national politics becoming too centralist, their power will wane and local authorities will have more relevance. Internationally, world organisations will direct global affairs, sometimes infringing upon national concerns, but less threatening to individual inalienable rights.

Professor Niall Ferguson, a prominent historian, has categorised the 20th Century as History's Age of Hatred'. It marked an undercurrent of tensions caused by the clash of civilisations and manifested in the War on Terror. However, I do not believe another World War will erupt, either between the U.S. and China; or in the Middle East where problems will continue piecemeal, until the elder statesmen die off and younger

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